What Affects Your Hotel Website’s Google Ranking?

By Brianna Wenner

According to Searchmetrics, 60% of leisure travelers and 41% of business travelers build their own trip itineraries. This means that travel brands must ensure they are doing whatever possible to be found/seen online in order to stay competitive and generate bookings. To successfully do this, attention must be paid to Google rank and the factors that affect it. Searchmetrics recent study, Travel Ranking Factors, examines what affects Google rank, giving brands an opportunity to step up their game and increase their findability online. Here are some of their key findings:

• Bulleted Lists

The study found that travel websites with longer bulleted lists appeared higher in Google search results. This emphasizes travelers’ need for more detailed information.

• Keywords

Top ranked travel search results only contained the searched keyword about half as much as general searches. This suggests that keyword matching is no longer as important it used to be and that marketers should focus on creating comprehensive content.

• Images

Number and size of images will also affect your Google ranking. Travelers want to see what they’re booking and the more relevant images you show them, the better. Image size is also important as top Google search results include images at least 200×200 pixels, although bigger is better.

• Internal Links

The study suggests that the more internal links a travel page has, the higher it will rank in Google search. Make it easy for travelers visiting your website to find more related information rather than having to go back to Google to search for it. Additionally, the structure of these internal links affects your rank as they should make it intuitive for travelers to navigate your site.

• Content Relevance

Highly relevant text content on travel sites proved to be important as this affected Google rank more so than in other industries. Be sure your content is relevant in order to rank highly and gain visibility.

• Word Count

Word count on top ranking travel pages was significantly higher than general searches. Top 10 travel sites examined in the study had over 2,500 words on average, where the average across all industries was 1,633. Being wordier and providing solid, comprehensive content will help to boost your rank on Google and will better inform consumers.

Using this information to make adjustments to your hotel website should help to improve your Google ranking and in turn can increase direct bookings.